Germany’s Institute for Broadcasting Technology (IRT) has officially closed its doors after going into liquidation.
All of the IRT’s research has been stopped, with all projects moved to the IRT’s partners, while all staff will be redundant by the end of March.
The IRT’s 14 shareholders, which include ARD, ZDF, and Deutsche Welle, as well as ORF in Austria and SRG in Switzerland, terminated their agreement with the organisation at the end of 2020, stating that they couldn’t find “a viable model” to keep it going.
Founded in 1956, the IRT developed technical solutions alongside its shareholders, the broadcasting industry and other organisations. Recently, it has been involved in the EU-funded 5G Virtuossa project, and also worked with the EBU and BBC R&D on open-source, next-gen audio tools.
